Inspiration Factory

Sometimes you’ve just got to create your own creative heaven. So we did, in a spare 10m2 in our place. Transforming a boring white-walled, beige-tiled, concrete and soulless square into something with a heartbeat … a creative space with the feel of a mountain lodge or a lakeside log cabin. Think lots of real wood, cool artwork and vintage props …

And the best thing is, we built it ourselves. An email went out to a handful of friends with a picture of a stunning cabin in the US and the line “When’s the next time you’ll have the chance to build a mountain lodge?” And it worked. Two Saturdays later and we completed the job by putting the corrugated roofing in. The build was an interesting experience. Ever heard of the phrase, too many chiefs and not enough indians?! It goes without saying perhaps, that there were endless ‘how to’ discussions over countless coffees, but perhaps that was only to be expected when in the company of other entrepreneurs.

I purposely went out to find used raw wood with character, partly because there was no need to chop down new trees and secondly because re-used wood has flavour and substance. After a long search, I found some used scaffolding planks, generic levitra without prescription which did the trick amazingly well. There’s nothing like wood with concrete stains, paint spots and the smell of labour. It gives it character and means there’s a story to tell. The table was a broken cable carrier, covered in great Arabic and English jargon, which had been left as scrap wood. We embedded it within the wall structure. You can only envision the discussions on how to fit it! The flooring must have been used previously as container packaging for a shipment destined for the French embassy. To break the overkill of wood, I left the forth wall nice and bright with matching raw wallpaper. On the floor, I just recently found a stunning vintage carpet from Turkey.

On the wall, is a lovely piece of art by the Iranian artist Mahmoud Hamadani. Mahmoud is represented in Dubai by the XVA Gallery in DIFC/Bastakiya. I had seen some of his work in the past, which triggered me to check out some of his new work. his art stood out for its simple lines. It just stood out for me as a wonderful antidote to our chaotic worlds. It certainly fits in with our creative and often mad working environment. I just couldn’t see my own images on the wall, let alone someone else’s, so Mahmoud’s did the trick perfectly.

We moved from big white board to a smaller yet very cool framed acrylic sheet. The idea is that ‘what fits on the board is all that we can get done’ … a stark shift away from never ending to do lists.

I’ve got an ever-growing book and magazine collection amassed from all around the world. I’ve bought books, which have never even been opened, just because the packaging looked nice or the size of the book appealed. Not knowing the language it’s in doesn’t seem to matter. As you can see, I’m a pretty big book fan!

Now with our small cabin flourishing, there’s always the ultimate wish to build a similar but bigger space to house a huge Imagination Factory … opening the floor to tenant freelancers and bringing the chemistry alive. I’ve blogged about it in the past ‘where they create’. Who can help me find an old school, a battered factory or a used hangar? I want a building with energy and vibe that I can convert into something very special.